1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of e-commerce, and more particularly to a system and method for identifying sourcing event metrics for analyzing a supplier.
2. Background of the Invention
Requests for quotes and auction-type events are increasingly becoming a popular manner by which to solicit bids from multiple suppliers. These requests seek to select the “best” or most appropriate bids from a pool of bidders or suppliers. In other words, multiple suppliers or bidding entities are invited to place bids related to providing an item or service. Frequently, a supplier is chosen merely based on the price offered to complete a project, provide a service, provide a product, and so on. Disadvantageously, this bidding process fails to factor in other variables that may be significant in selecting the most appropriate supplier.
Due to this disadvantage, strategic sourcing processes often take into account a variety of additional factors associated with a particular supplier. In other words, price may be only one of many factors considered when selecting a supplier. For instance, a time for delivery of a particular product may be a factor taken into consideration. Typically, these additional factors may prove to be as important as price to a consumer selecting a supplier. For example, a consumer may be willing to pay a higher price for faster delivery of a product.
In order to allow for consideration of various factors in the bidding process, in addition to the price factor, some consumers have adopted the use of metrics. Metrics set forth a variety of variables that may be contemplated when choosing a supplier, including, but not limited to, price. Typically, the use of metrics is a manual process. Accordingly, creating metrics and generating usable data from the metrics is a laborious process. Often, complex spreadsheets need to be developed by a consumer in order for metrics data to be evaluated. Thus, a great deal of time and effort is expended to produce a document that is utilized for a single project. Furthermore, the spreadsheets are frequently tailored to a specific set of suppliers and accordingly are not usable in evaluating other sets of suppliers. Thus, utilizing metrics is frequently too cumbersome to merit employing a metrics identification and analysis process.
Therefore, it can be appreciated that there exists a need for a system and method for identifying sourcing event metrics for analyzing a supplier. There exists a further need for a process for efficiently querying suppliers in relation to these metrics.